Away3D 3.6.0: Flash 10 upgrades and the Influxis Battlecell API

by Rob Bateman

The latest update to Away3D gives a much needed boost to both speed and memory optimisation in the FP10 branch, and marks our first release after the switch to full time Flash 10 development of the engine. However, for anyone still using Flash 9, you will not be forgotten! We will still be posting maintenance updates, but our main focus of development is now firmly in the Flash 10 camp.
In order to celebrate the release, we are launching an online demo born out of a recent collaboration with Influxis, who have been assisting with an experiment that uses both the extra power of the new engine and the peer-to-peer capabilities of Flash 10.1 to produce a realtime 3D multiplayer prototype. We'd like to thank Influxis dev Sean McCracken, as well as Away3D coders David Lenaerts and Fabrice Closier, and 3D designer Federico Selmi for their hard work producing the latest and greatest Away3D / Influxis experiment.
The demo uses a newly developed API for multiplayer games over RTMFP (the new P2P protocol available to Flash 10.1 users). What it allows is live data connections between clients with little to no lag, creating the perfect environment for some serious fragging fun! BattleCell is the name given to both the demo and the underlying AS3 API, the latter written by Sean in order to easily connect multiple users and pass data between clients.
The BattleCell demo is a typical FPS Deathmatch-style game, complete with room allocation, choice of weapons and a large play area for you to roam. Obstacles in the game include lifts, teleport windows, acid baths and secret tunnels to assist your attacks... but be careful who is lurking round the corner!
The new 3.6.0 version of Away3D has a completely remodeled core to take full advantage of all native 3D APIs in Flash 10, which results in more stable and less memory-hungry apps. Performance has improved also, and we expect framerates to increase still further as we continue to optimise the new framework. There have been some older class replacements that you need to be aware of when upgrading: both custom classes MatrixAway3D and Number3D have been replaced by the native Matrix3D and Vector3D classes respectively for added speed and stability.
The Battlecell demo is kindly hosted by Influxis and can be accessed online at http://www.influxis.com/battlecell. Type in a room name for your friends to join, and a user name so that others can identify you in-game. The game URL can easily be copy-pasted for fast access to a room, and any user leaving the game automatically frees-up their slot for a new user to join. As the APIs are still being tested, a maximum of 4 users can join a single room at once, but we hope to increase this limit in future versions.
The new version of Away3D can be downloaded from the fp10 branch of the googlecode svn, or from the downloads section of away3d.com. A 3.6.0 tag will be added to the svn in the next few days, along with a 2.5.2 tag for the latest fixes to the fp9 version of the engine. We will also be tagging a 3.5.2 dot version of the fp10 branch that will take advantage of some of the recent updates without any external class changes, for Away3D applications already in production. For now, enjoy the game and enjoy the new Away3D release!
The Away3D Team
*******Update*******
New versions for Flash 9 (2.5.2) and Flash 10 (3.5.2) have been tagged in the svn - these are legacy versions that include all bugfixes and optimisations from the last round of development, minus the API changes. Developers should use these if they want to upgrade an ongoing project, as neither will affect code already written. You can also download the 2.5.2 version from the downloads page. Any further bugs encountered can be reported on the issues list or the Away3D mailing list. Cheers!

COMMENTS

27 Sep 2010 11:56 AM

Kapom said:

Wowww!!! That's cooooool.

27 Sep 2010 06:11 PM

redRaccon said:

Oh Dear!
Great Work!
How many polygons at same time this new Away3D can render without to be above 30fps?
Wonderfull

Vibo’s Blog — FLASH3V » Blog Arc said:

BattleCell RTMFP Demo is live! « Influxis La said:

[...] And please check out the amazing work the Away3d is doing with the new version of their engine at: Away3d. [...]

29 Sep 2010 05:59 AM

@yester_nova said:

Cool, looking into that

29 Sep 2010 01:25 PM

R Villani said:

That's amazing! I've made some tests and it's really faster!!
But I don't know if it was just me..found a problem with the collada importer. Something with the 'loadTextures' function at the 'Loader3D' class. I couldn't use the models I was using on the previous version, 3.5, until I took everything in the 'if' statement from the 3.5 'loadTextures' and overwrited the 3.6 one.
Now everything is fine and better! XD

01 Oct 2010 09:10 AM

Rob Bateman said:

@R Villani

I think there were some changes introduced to the textures filepath in order to handle backslashes from windows-based collada exporters, but these weren't meant to break original functionality. If you have an example collada that is causing these problems, please send it over on our mailing list and we can fix the bug in the current trunk

01 Oct 2010 04:40 PM

knalle said:

That is cool. Tried Away3D before FP10 was around and when I was just starting to really get the grasp of OOP AS3. Lately I have been working on a project requiring "real 3D" and I decided to go for the Away3Dlite (FP10 only) ... guess its FP10-away3D now on for me

You are doing a REALLY GREAT JOB. Away3D is my engine of choice

04 Oct 2010 06:09 AM

rne1223 said:

Once again...another awesome example...and once again...r u guys going to release the source of this beautiful presentation?

04 Oct 2010 09:20 PM

Tony Lukasavage said:

Awesome work as usual guys! Glad to finally see those Number3D's adiosed. Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to battlecell!

18 Oct 2010 12:56 AM

zhys9 said:

hi, i got an 404 error when loading "/battlecell/playerProductInstall.swf"

19 Oct 2010 03:35 PM

redRaccon said:

This new Awaylite version is really awesome. But i have problems with layers. I did:
...
var mmodel:Mesh=event.target.handle as Mesh
mmodel.layer=new Sprite();
mmodel.layer.filters=[new BlurFilter(...)]

view.addChild(mmodel.layer);
view.scene.addChild(mmodel);
...

And no blur filter :-|. It work before. There´s some change about it?
Cheers

22 Oct 2010 10:05 PM

David said:

hello, i am having problems with the Vector3D because it doesnt found it, it gives the next error

P:EXERCISESaway3dTWOLines.as, Line 19 1046: Type was not found or was not a compile-time constant: Vector3D.

what can i do Number3D is not longer available....

thanks

14 Nov 2010 06:43 PM

mix said:

How can I repeat textrue more then 10 times?

07 Jan 2011 01:56 PM

Julien Gouesse said:

Hi!

This demo does not work on my machine. Adobe Flash Player 10.1 is installed. I'm on Mandriva Linux 2010. It's strange because it displays the icon "get adobe flash" where it is already installed. I don't understand because some nice 3D FPS written in Java work fine here including the excellent Jake 2 (Java + JOGL), Undead Arena, ...